Summer Evening By the Window with Psalms

Close scrutiny of the past.How my soul yearns within me like those soulsin the nineteenth century before the great wars,like curtains that want to pull freeof the open window and fly.

We console ourselves with short breaths,as, after running, we always recover.We want to reach death hale and hearty,like a murderer sentenced to death,wounded when he was caught,whose judges want him to heal beforehe’s brought to the gallows.

I think, how many still waterscan yield a single night of stillnessand how many green pastures, wide as deserts,can yield the quiet of a single hourand how many valleys of the shadow of death do we needto be a compassionate shade in the unrelenting sun.

I look out the window: a hundred and fiftypsalms pass through the twilight,a hundred and fifty psalms, great and small.What a grand and glorious and transient fleet!